An inkjet printing system, as one embodiment of a fluid ejection system, may include a printhead, an ink supply which supplies liquid ink to the printhead, and an electronic controller which controls the printhead. The printhead, as one embodiment of a fluid ejection device, ejects drops of ink through a plurality of nozzles or orifices and toward a print medium, such as a sheet of paper, so as to print onto the print medium. Typically, the orifices are arranged in one or more arrays such that properly sequenced ejection of ink from the orifices causes characters or other images to be printed upon the print medium as the printhead and the print medium are moved relative to each other.
The orifices are often formed in an orifice layer or orifice plate of the printhead. The profile, size, and/or spacing of the orifices in the orifice plate influences the quality of an image printed with the printhead. For example, the size and spacing of the orifices influences a resolution, often measured as dots-per-inch (dpi), of the printhead and, therefore, a resolution or dpi of the printed image. Thus, consistent or uniform formation of the orifice plate is desirable.
Known fabrication techniques for orifice plates include electroformation and laser ablation. Unfortunately, high resolution orifice plates formed by electroformation are exceedingly thin, thereby creating other manufacturing and/or design issues. In addition, laser ablation of orifice plates often produces orifice plates with inconsistent or non-uniform orifice profiles such that the quality of images printed with printheads including such orifice plates is degraded.
For these and other reasons, a need exists for the present invention.